CAA has invited a diverse group of artists, scholars, teachers, and students to contribute to the 2011 Annual Conference Blog, with the hope of capturing the full and exciting range of experiences, points of view, and opinions that is expected in New York in 2011.

Since the Boston conference in 2006, CAA has sponsored a team blog to accompany the organization’s main event. From longtime members to first-time attendees, past writers for each year have chronicled all aspects of the conference: sessions and panels, exhibitions and parties, Career Services and the Book and Trade Fair, and more.

The seven bloggers this year are: Dwayne Butcher, an artist, teacher, and connoisseur of chicken wings who lives and works in Memphis, Tennessee; Patricia Flores, a historian of decorative arts and art history from San Francisco, California; Charlotte Frost, a UK-based academic, broadcaster, and self-described glamour puss focusing on art’s relationship with technology; Joy Garnett, a New York–based artist, writer, and blogger whose paintings explore the “apocalyptic sublime”; William T. Gassaway, who studies Precolumbian art in the doctoral program at Columbia University in Manhattan; Tempestt Hazel, a recent art-history graduate from Columbia College Chicago who cofounded a nonprofit art organization, Sixty Inches From Center; and Alisha McCurdy, an artist pursuing her MFA at Stony Brook University on Long Island, New York. Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, will also post during the week.

The Art History Newsletter, a website that has “endeavored to synopsize news and opinion of interest to art historians and to provide original reporting on conferences, lectures, and other special events,” seeks contributors to expand its content.

Since 2006, Jonathan Lackman, a doctoral student at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, has run a mostly one-person blog with weekly posts, with added writers covering the CAA Annual Conference, among other events. Now that expanded coverage may appear year round.

The official blog of the 2010 Annual Conference, which began publishing last week, is offering a unique, exciting perspective of this year’s meeting. In place of the usual mix of CAA member artists and art historians, fifteen graduate and undergraduate students from Columbia College Chicago will be giving an hour-by-hour account—in words, pictures, and video—of all things CAA.

Look not only for discussions on sessions, the Book and Trade Fair, and other CAA-sponsored events (bloggers have listed their must-sees), but also for postings from late-night conversations and sunrise coffee talks, as well as buzz from the evening receptions and gallery openings.

Recruited by professors Paul Catanese and Terence Hannum of Columbia College Chicago, the fifteen bloggers include several artists working in the MFA program in interdisciplinary art and media, as well as one art historian in training. Students from other diverse disciplines—public relations, documentary filmmaking, arts and media management, journalism, interactive media, and graphic design—have also joined the blogging team.

Nearly all these young writers have never attended a CAA conference, so their fresh approach to our venerable event is highly anticipated. Your thoughts are also welcome: the conference blog’s comments section is open to everyone.

Once again, CAA is publishing an official Annual Conference blog in order to chronicle the event’s diverse experiences, points of view, and opinions. Six bloggers, selected from among the CAA membership, will be writing daily—even hourly—on Los Angeles conference events. Christopher Howard, CAA managing editor, will moderate and post images.

The 2009 bloggers are: Katie Anania, a graduate student in art history at the University of Texas at Austin; Beth Harris, director of digital learning at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; Micol Hebron, a California-based video and performance artist and an assistant professor of art at Chapman University; Benjamin Lima, a doctoral student at Yale University; Ed Schad, a Los Angeles–based writer and a curatorial associate for the Broad Art Foundation; and Steven Zucker, dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York. Read their full biographies on the blog.

Regular sessions and ARTspace happenings, Career Services and the Book and Trade Fair, exhibition openings and special events—anything and everything is game for the CAA conference blog!